a provincial order from the States General, by which the West India Company was directed to make some concessions to the colony, (1650.) Two years elapse, and we find Van der Donck still appealing to the States General for justice, (1652.) The most that he procured was a municipal government for the city (as it was styled) of New Amsterdam, the first city of the United States. It was organized in the following year, (1653,) with sheriff, burgomasters, and judges, but all appointed by the director, Peter Stuyvesant, who had carried on for several years a downright war in defence of his prerogatives. In resentment against him personally much of the vigor belonging to the liberal party had been expended. He carried the day, it must be confessed, notwithstanding the city charter, notwithstanding also the remonstrances of a convention of eight towns held the same year.

Religious

The measure of arbitrary government was not persecu- yet full. At the instance of two clergymen of the tion. Dutch church, a proclamation from the director appeared, threatening fines upon all preachers and hearers of unlicensed congregations, (1656.) The first to suffer were Lutherans, who were not merely fined, but imprisoned; then some Baptists, who were not merely fined, but banished. Soon after, a few Quakers fell into the hands of the persecutors, one of them being subjected to tortures as horrid as any inflicted in the English colonies, (1657.) A few years afterwards, the remonstrance of a Quaker, John Bowne, who had been transported to Holland as a criminal, brought upon Director Stuyvesant the censure of the company for his oppression, (1662-63.)

Subjec

Despite all these drawbacks upon its strength, tion of New Netherland was strong enough, with help from New Swe- the company, to subdue its neighbor of New Sweden. That colony, though reënforced at times, con

den.

Partly in op

tinued in a precarious state, with few settlers and uncertain resources. Protested against by the Dutch as interloping within their territory, it had nevertheless invited Dutch emigrants amongst its own settlers, (1640.) But the New Netherland authorities were on the alert. position to a Connecticut settlement attempted on the Delaware, but chiefly in resistance to the advances of the Swedes, Stuyvesant built his Fort Casimir at the present Newcastle, (1651.) A new governor, Rysingh, coming to the Swedish colony, got possession of the fort without difficulty, (1654.) It cost him dear; for Stuyvesant, with a force of several hundred, principally sent from Holland for the purpose, not only recovered Fort Casimir, but conquered Fort Christina and the whole of New Sweden, (1655.) A few Swedes swore allegiance to the Dutch; the rest went home or emigrated to the English colonies. The Swedish government protested against the conquest of its colony; but it had too much upon its hands in Europe to recover its possessions in America. So New Sweden came to an end; and the dream of the generous Gustavus Adolphus that he was to found a place of refuge from persecution and from corruption vanished forever.

New Am

The victorious West India Company hardly knew stel. what to do with its conquest. It found a purchaser, however, in the city of Amsterdam, which became the mistress of what had been New Sweden, — portions of our Delaware and Pennsylvania, under the name of New Amstel, (1656.) This was enlarged by a subsequent purchase so as to embrace the Dutch possessions on both banks of the Delaware; in other words, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, (1663.)

English

But the dominions of the Dutch, whether West aggres- India Company or Amsterdam city, were passing into other hands. The claims of England to the

sions.

territory had been asserted, as mentioned in a former chapter, from a very early period. They lost nothing, it may be believed, of their force, as colonies multiplied and lands were in continually increasing demand. An old grant from the Council for New England* was made to cover Long Island. Connecticut and Massachusetts pushed on towards the Hudson. On the south, parties from Connecticut and from Maryland threatened the domains upon the Delaware, (1639-63.) Year after year, during a quarter of a century, brought some fresh invasion of the English, exciting some fresh remonstrance from the Dutch. "Those of Hartford," runs one of the Dutch records, "have not only usurped and taken in the lands of Connecticut, but have also beaten the servants of their high mightinesses the honored company with sticks and plough staves, laming them," (1640.) It is the tone of all the records, querulous and feeble, the wail of a colony never numbering more than ten thousand against its far more numerous neighbors. Nor were its neighbors its only foes. Amongst its own people was a large number of Englishmen, emigrants from hostile colonies, who naturally became hostile settlers. At one time, some English villages of Long Island proclaimed “the commonwealth of England and his highness the lord protector," (1655.) At another, the towns at the west end of the island proclaimed the English king, (1663.) Finally: the danger was so great that Peter Stuyvesant, the foe of all liberal institutions, called a convention of his province. It appears how far the English had pushed their aggressions on scanning the meagre list of the towns or settlements that were represented. New Amsterdam and Rensselaerswyck head the roll of twelve. The convention favored peace with the Indians; as for the English, why, the English in New Netherland alone were "six to one," (1664.)

*To the Earl of Stirling, (1635.)

Long as the dissensions between the English and War; loss of the the Dutch had lasted, neither the colonies nor the province. mother countries had gone to war about them. A war of two years (1652-54) between the Dutch and the English under Cromwell did not involve their American settlements. When England came under Charles II., another war with Holland was resolved upon, partly from commercial and partly from political motives, the chief of the latter being the intimate connection at that time between the Dutch and the French. Before war was formally declared, New Netherland was surprised by an English fleet. It did not come as a national, but as an individual expedition. Charles II. had made a grant, as has been narrated, of New Netherland to the Duke of York and Albany. It had been the work of a few months only for the duke to buy up other English claims, and collect commissioners and troops to take possession of his new realms. Accompanied by John Winthrop, governor of Connecticut, who, though amiable and disinterested in most respects, was full of determination against the Dutch, the commissioners, headed by Colonel Nichols, obtained possession of the province without battle. The terms of the surrender promised to the conquered their religion, their law of inheritance, and their trade and intercourse with Holland, (1664.) The transaction, at first professedly discountenanced by England, was afterwards sustained by her, and finally submitted to by Holland in the treaty of Breda, (1667.)

Recovery

On the outbreak of fresh hostilities between the and final same countries, a few years later, (1672,) New York, loss. as New Amsterdam was now called, received the summons to capitulate to a Dutch squadron, (1673.) It did so, and was held by the Dutch for upwards of a year, when it was once more, and for the last time, surrendered by them, (1674.) Thus were the Dutch, and with them the Swedes, brought beneath the English dominion.

Spanish

race.

CHAPTER V.

SPANISH WARS.

THERE were other races, rivals of the English, less easily to be reduced than the Dutch or the Swedes. One upon the southern border bore the flag of Spain, rent and dim indeed, but still the flag of a great nation.

Its col- Yet the colony of the Spaniards was far from ony. being a great one. St. Augustine, eldest of the permanent settlements upon United States soil, was amongst the least active of them all. Half garrison, half mission in its character, it formed a post where a few troops and a few priests kept up the Spanish claim upon Florida. A century after its foundation, it was nearly annihilated by one of the buccaneering expeditions that were wont to ravage the American coast. It rallied, however, especially when a treaty between Spain and England put a stop to the English commissions with which the buccaneers of the time were generally provided, (1670.)

Collisions

But there was no good will to speak of between with the Spain and England, or amongst their colonies. A English. force from Florida was soon marching against the newly-organized Carolina, a more flagrant incursion, in Spanish eyes, upon the territory still claimed by Spain, than any of the northern colonies had made. The expedition was met and turned back by the resolute Carolinians, (1672.) Some years after, another invasion of the Spon